Forget about Don Cheadle replacing Terence Howard as James Rhodes / War Machine in Iron Man II, which smells a lot like the “we’ll threaten to replace Tobey Maguire with Jake Gyllenhaal” tactic that Sony used for Spider-Man II –– Hollywood has been doing this for years. It was bad enough back in the days of television with Dick Sargent replacing Dick York in Bewitched, but now it’s becoming pretty commonplace for producers to replace actors in iconic roles. Although now it’s more common due to monetary concerns, which seems to be what has taken Howard out of the War Machine suit, it’s also common to see an actor ankle a role because they don’t like the source material, or the direction the character is taking. We’ve put together several different re-castings, which all happened for a variety of reasons: money, dissatisfaction with the script, test audience reactions, and actors just growing tired of playing the same character. Check them out after the break.
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Jonathan Demme has had an extremely successful career ever since directing Caged Heat in 1974. He won the Oscar for Best Director in 1992 with Silence of the Lambs, and helped Tom Hanks act his way to a Best Actor Oscar for Philadelphia. He’s also directed things as varied as a Saturday Night Live episode in 1980, the Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense, and Neil Young: Heart of Gold, with a new Young movie on the way in next year’s Trunk Show.
Rachel Getting Married represents another big change for him, as the film was shot completely handheld, features a lot of improvised dialogue, and uses ambient music from musicians actually on the set. It’s about as close to a Dogma film as you can get these days. We sat down with Jonathan in Toronto, and read on to find out what inspirations he drew on for this film, why he wanted to cast director Paul Thomas Anderson as the male lead, and how he came to work with Anne Hathaway.
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